The GQ&A: Richard Linklater

The director's latest movie, Bernie, is possibly the most Texan movie of all time

Richard Linklater introduced us to the weirdos of Austin over 20 years ago in Slacker, and then he sprung Matthew McConaughey on us in Dazed and Confused. The golden boy of Austin-based indie filmmaking is the only person who could have brought a tall tale like Bernie to life. It's a story that's entirely too strange to believe, and yet too Texan to be fiction.

Bernie is based on the true story of a genial mortician with a golden singing voice and a talent for making deceased loved ones look fantastic in their casket. Everyone in the small East Texas town of Carthage adores him, especially the widows. When Marjorie Nugent's husband dies, Bernie takes it upon himself to befriend the notoriously mean, lonely, and wealthy widow. Eventually, he snaps, murders her, stuffs her body in a deep freeze, and lies about her whereabouts. And once he does confess, it seems that no one in Carthage, TX, believes Bernie could have killed anyone—or more to the point, they don't particularly blame him. With Jack Black starring as Bernie, and Shirley MacLaine taking on the unenviable role of Marjorie Nugent in Linklater's adaptation of the 1998 feature by Skip Hollandsworth in Texas Monthly, the movie straddles the line between dark comedy and drama.

With a dulcet accent and deep tan, Linklater sat down to talk with me about small-town Texas, the evolution of SXSW, and the curse of being a character actor trapped in a leading man's body. (That would be McConaughey, naturally.)

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GQ: Being from Dallas, I feel like this the most Texan movie I've ever seen. It is the kind of thing that would only happen in Texas.Richard Linklater: It feels that way. On one hand, I go, "Oh, this is about small town, America, maybe small southern America," but when you really break it down, it's Texas... This was always part and parcel. I grew up in Huntsville; haven't seen too many movies from East Texas.

GQ: I love the map of Texas. I love that Dallas, of course, is where...Richard Linklater: All the snobs and the Mercedes [are] [laughs]. That's my explanation of Texas for people who have no reference [frame], when they ask me where I grew up. I try to explain East Texas in relation to the rest of Texas, so I've been kind of fantasizing about putting that in a movie for years. Did you ever see that postcard? When I was little, there was a postcard, like, "How Texans see the rest of the country," and it truly is like that map. Texas goes to the Canadian border. That always stayed in my mind, so it was fun to play with that.

GQ: I have a lot of mixed feelings about Texas, having lived there, grown up there, left.Richard Linklater: Especially Dallas. [laughs]

GQ: I was talking to a friend, and she pointed out that it's the only place where you can get a pair of sunglasses shaped like the state and you can go anywhere and people will know what it looks like. That's Texas. Richard Linklater: There is something to that. Matthew [McConaughey] talks about that. He's like, when people ask you in Europe, "Where are you from?" you know, if you're from Ohio, [you say] "I'm American," but people from Texas: "Where are you from?" "Oh, Texas." And they'll know what you're talking about. They'll have some reference, and not always for the best of reasons. I've seen that change over the years, too. It used to be like, "Oh... do you have cows? Is your dad in the oil business?" It darkened in the Bush years. You quit saying that as much. But you know, whatever.

GQ: Travelling internationally, you don't want to tell them you're from Bush country.Richard Linklater: It got tough... You didn't want to say US, and then you really didn't want to say Texas. It's like, "Oh God, you guys have screwed up a whole generation!"

GQ: Did you get the Carthage residents to be in the movie? Richard Linklater: Some.

GQ: Was one of them Matthew McConaughey's mom?Richard Linklater: Yes, but she didn't know the Nugent story any more than anybody else.

GQ: I just thought that was a funny cameo.Richard Linklater: There were a combination of actors, most were people from Carthage and surrounding areas. The woman with the glasses who visits Jack at the end in prison, she's from Rusk. Others were from Longview and surrounding areas, and almost all them knew of the story, but some of them actually were friends with Bernie and Marjorie, and there was one lady who traveled with them, took a trip with them once, so it ran the gamut. Hopefully, you can't tell the difference.

GQ: No it just looked like these people were definitely from Texas. It really straddles documentary, drama, dark comedy—but I did feel like I wouldn't have convicted Bernie. Would you?Richard Linklater: I would have convicted him, but just not given him—I mean, for what he does, you're a confessed murderer, yes, you should be convicted, but it's one of those murders with circumstances, clearly, so that should play into the sentencing. And look at Bernie's record, which was spotless before and after he goes to prison. So he got really royally screwed, ultimately, on his sentencing. He just got a bum deal from the time he was arrested.

GQ: I think people who don't know the back-story and stay through the credits will be really shocked to see Jack Black with Bernie. Even having known the story going in, it's shocking.Richard Linklater: I thought it was such a unique opportunity. I was shooting that on my Flip camera. How often do you really get to see the person the story's based on sharing the same frame with the actor playing him? It's pretty rare.

GQ: I noticed that none of the people who were related to Marjorie by name were thanked. Then I read that fantastic article in The New York Times.Richard Linklater: A week ago, yeah. Wasn't that interesting? That was news to me, a lot of that.

GQ: Which parts?Richard Linklater: Joe [Rhodes] had told me some things, but I didn't know him very well. I didn't totally know his angle, but Marjorie sounds so much worse than the film portrays her. And I tell people, almost jokingly—"Oh, was she really that bad?" I say, "Actually, the closer you get to her, via family or intimates, the worse she actually gets, if that tells you anything." But I wanted the viewpoint of the film to reflect Bernie's. He sees her in a better light than anybody else, until he doesn't. To this day, Bernie doesn't say bad things about her. He says he remembers the good times. Bernie just doesn't see the bad in people—he should have, and it ends up costing him his freedom. It's a very complex psychology between them.